The Commerce Department reversed its use of adverse facts available against an Indian exporter of welded carbon steel standard pipes and tubes but said it was “concerned” that use of unaffiliated, noncooperative suppliers could provide otherwise-cooperative review respondents a “cloak of invisibility” (Garg Tube Export v. U.S., CIT # 21-00169).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Court of International Trade on July 10 kept the vast majority of the confidential record shielded from the public in Chinese printer cartridge exporter Ninestar Corp.'s suit against its placement on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. Judge Gary Katzmann only ordered an eight-page stretch of the confidential record unsealed, given that it detailed the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force's "standard operating procedures."
The Commerce Department dropped the subsidy rate for exporter KG Dongbu Steel Co. from 10.52% to 5.89% after deciding on remand not to countervail the company's three debt-to-equity restructurings. The trade court remanded Commerce's decision in the 2019 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea to countervail the restructurings after declining to countervail them in the preceding three CVD reviews (see 2404040043) (KG Dongbu Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00047).
Tire importer ZC Rubber America told the Court of International Trade on July 2 that the government and petitioner Accuride Corp. failed to defend the Commerce Department's "substantial transformation" analysis regarding steel truck wheels made in Thailand with either Chinese-origin rims or discs (Asia Wheel Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00143).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 17-27 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
Refraining from joining exporters’ June 13 submission to the Court of International Trade (see 2406140059), a plaintiff-intervenor importer filed its own motion for judgment making similar arguments against Commerce’s finding that Thai solar panel exporters had circumvented an antidumping duty order on solar panels from China (Canadian Solar International Limited v. U.S., CIT # 23-00222).
The Commerce Department on June 26 called an importer’s claim that it could have double-counted industry support for an antidumping investigation “misplaced,” saying that double-counting wasn’t possible normally under the department's calculation method and that there was no evidence U.S. producers had “literally counted each ton of pipe they produced twice” (Tenaris Bay City v. U.S., CIT # 22-00343).
The Court of International Trade sustained the Commerce Department's decision to pick a secondary mandatory respondent in an antidumping review despite temporal limits on the selection process. However, Judge Mark Barnett sent back the agency's methodology for picking the respondent due to its failure to explain its removal of Shandong Linglong Tyre Co. from the list of eligible exporters.
The Commerce Department can't extend an antidumping and countervailing duty circumvention finding based on adverse facts available for one mandatory respondent on a "country-wide basis," exporter Trina Solar Co. argued June 25. Filing a motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade, Trina said Commerce made "no company-specific findings" on whether all the cooperative companies were circumventing the AD/CVD orders on Chinese solar cells and, as a matter of law, can't impose the circumvention finding on those companies (Trina Solar (Vietnam) Science & Technology Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00228).